


Fractures

by todisturbtheuniverse



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Background Relationships, Character Study, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-24
Updated: 2017-01-24
Packaged: 2018-09-23 11:43:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9656066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/todisturbtheuniverse/pseuds/todisturbtheuniverse
Summary: There are a lot of things that go unsaid between Anakin and Ahsoka.Don't follow me down this path,she thinks he is trying to tell her, but the woods are thick, and there is no real danger of that; he is already nearly out of sight.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A pointless bit of Ahsoka-POV woolgathering. I’m mid-season 4 of Clone Wars and rusty on Star Wars in general so, you know, take that with a grain of salt (I know some spoilers for this series/Rebels, but not everything).

“Attachment is forbidden,” he says to her, when she returns to Coruscant empty-handed and smarting, Lux gone through her fingers like an overly enthusiastic durni incapable of comprehending that the river is too deep for him to swim in.

She glances sideways at him from where they sit, watching the docking agent go over her ship. He’s said it conversationally, not accusingly. Stiff, almost, like they’re old words he hasn’t said in a long time.

And he wouldn’t have, would he, the way he goes sneaking off into the shadows to meet Senator Amidala every time their paths cross. She’s never seen him do something as intimate as kiss her–though after the business with Lux, she’s not sure a kiss can be anything but weird and a little frustrating–and what would she know about how lovers behave, but she’s seen his hand buried in Padmé’s hair, his arm so tight around her that it’s as if he thinks she’ll vanish if he lets go.

She asked Master Kenobi about it, maybe a year or so ago, when they were doing nothing so scandalous as embracing in shadow and instead standing in some hallway, talking. She doesn’t even remember the hallway, the occasion; her life has been too full of hallways and blaster fire and the heat of her lightsaber in the palm of her hand to remember the context of individual moments. They swim by, so many fish she’ll never see again. If she lives through the war, and it has been close enough a few times to entertain the idea that she won’t, then she’s not sure she’ll ever remember it clearly.

Obi-Wan had watched them, as she watched them: the easy smile on Anakin’s face, Padmé’s laugh, the back-and-forth ribbing never far from their conversations, though Ahsoka has now forgotten the words.

“They are old friends,” he’d said at last, though something in his voice made her look at him askance. He does his most proper Jedi impression in these moments, arms clasped behind his back, blue eyes focused, but she sensed…a ripple. On a pond. The barest breeze, drifting over, disturbing the occupants. “They met when they were children. There was a threat made against her, several years ago, and he acted as her protection. I don’t believe he’s ever been able to let that go.”

That is always Obi-Wan’s line, that Anakin cannot let anything go. There’s always some disapproval there, but it carries with it some other _thing_ she doesn’t totally understand, until she acts too rashly to protect Lux and then the _thing_ crystallizes into clarity.

Senator Amidala happens to be passing by, approaching the landing pad with a smile on her face. It cannot be an accident. 

“Attachment is forbidden,” Ahsoka echoes, an acknowledgment that seems more to her like chains; she can feel them on him, weighing him down, shackles strewn from the war to the Council to his mother to Padmé, and him in the middle, pulled asunder.

She wonders too often why no one else says anything, because surely they must _know_. Attachment is forbidden, and Obi-Wan, who watched Anakin grow up, must know what this is. She thinks it might be a kindness for him to be caught, to be forced to choose, to be cast from the Jedi Order. She realizes how little she understands, that she is still somehow a child, but from this she knows that a person cannot contain multitudes: she is both Padawan and Commander, he is both Jedi and lover, and the Order turns a blind eye, allowing them to burn themselves out, running through two lifetimes and out of time just as quickly.

Later, much later, when all has gone dark and cold, she will think the Council had no business trying to mold either of them into Jedi.


End file.
